


Rubicon

by AngelOfDeath10



Category: Naruto
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Historical, Ancient Rome, Eventual Romance, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-23 21:38:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21088229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngelOfDeath10/pseuds/AngelOfDeath10
Summary: Sakura, Roman daughter of an esteemed medic, is traveling to their new home away from Rome when disaster strikes and left on the brink she finds a kindred spirit in her rescuer, who might also be her downfall.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> To warn you all now: while there are pieces of this which draw on real concepts it's still historical-ish. I love Roman history and I think it has some great parallels to draw with the Naruto universe but I'm not going to pretend like this is a faithful recreation of the 100s or 200s ACE which I was roughly targeting. Given that, I hope you like swords and sandals.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or its characters, I just build silly stories around personalities
> 
> Originally written in 2014.

As Sakura brushed her hair that morning, she wondered if there would be proper baths in their new home. The fine, not to mention expensive, red dyes were fading from her hair making it look dark pink and she wondered what her friend Ino would think back in the capital. She could hear her friend's chiding voice, tears stinging behind her eyes while she told herself to toughen up. Letters traveled regularly and well and she had been able to pass off three letters with mail carts since the beginning of their journey when the early spring thaw allowed them to make fast time north. Being on the road had not meant an end to cleanliness per se, but her father had told her to prepare herself for hardships on the road, and Sakura did the best she could to anticipate.

Ino, the consummate city girl, had been horrified when Sakura had told her she was leaving with her father for the northern territories.

"What could anywhere possibly have that could compare to Rome? Everything is here; the whole world wants to be here!" Her long blond hair was being twisted into an elaborate hairstyle as she talked, and her face contorted when her servants pulled a little too hard. Sakura often laughed at Ino's 'any price for beauty' attitude.

"It's only for a few years; 3 years will pass like an eye blink. He was requested specifically by the Senate because the governor wanted the best medical professional around. Naturally my father's name came up, and it seemed exciting for him. Nothing's been exciting for him lately." Sakura picked at her robe, still the black of mourning. Losing her mother and what turned out to be her baby sister at the same time had been devastating.

Ino huffed as her hair was finished and she crowded closer to the wall to bask in its radiant heat. The winter was unusually cold this January and Sakura heard her father complain of the fuel costs, which he did every year. It would only be colder in the north and she wondered how they would adapt.

"Your mother never would have agreed to this. You can always stay here, you know. Some nice families were asking about you after that last party we attended. I know you're not a fan of Lee, but he isn't the only guy around who had an eye on you." Ino waggled her eyebrows in caricature of their childhood friend. Negotiations for a marriage were not too far in the future for either of them, a prospect that excited Ino and terrified Sakura.

Sakura gave a short laugh and fiddled with her dangling gold earrings, a nervous gesture that had taken the place of rubbing her forehead after years of scolding from her mother and Ino both. Mourning had the only blessing of making romantic overtures tacky for a few more months yet.

As Ino had applied her makeup she had launched in to the usual gossip and more than a month later Sakura strained to remember what she had heard. Months old gossip might as well be ancient history but that's what was available to her right now: memories and medical texts her father had packed. She had read them all many times before, but her interest had waned after her mother had passed. Medicine didn't seem so all powerful now.

Weaving a tight but practical braid, she wound it onto her head and fastened it with a gold clasp in the shape of a bird. It had a tiny ruby eye, and Sakura mused anew how weird it felt to use her mother's jewelry now. The few things that were her own from before seemed more natural, but her father insisted as if the gaudy gold would keep her on their minds.

"The fog isn't letting up but we need to get moving." A small, sturdy man you'd never know her father had seen to the wounds of thousands of soldiers and citizens. He never carried himself with importance. "The light is too low for reading, I don't know what you expect to get out of that scroll."

"You're the one who said scholarship doesn't sleep." She was so wretchedly bored travelling with the new governor and his train of people. It felt like a small city moving with them and Sakura and her father at its center with the relatively young but morbidly obese man who needed so much attention to his hypochondria that he couldn't see that a brisk jog would solve many of his ills.

They used to talk more. There was a time when her father would have quizzed her on her studies, while their mother would chide him for teaching her useless facts about his trade. Women don't become medics, and what use would be knowledge of sewing skin when she would be better served knowing how to sew clothing. Humors, herbs, how to look for signs of infection and how to clean a wound or talk to a patient… as long as she could also balance a household account and negotiate with a vendor her mother had been satisfied. Now, when it made the least sense to stop teaching her, he found he was disinclined to share his trade.

He practically disappeared into the fog. Sakura, felt like that's how it was all the time these days with or without the weather. Anger sparked in her, she might as well be wearing mourning for both her parents as things stood. The scroll crinkled in her hand as she gripped it tightly. In a rare flare of rage her fist lashed out and struck the side of their covered cart. The pain was little solace, and in fact amplified her feelings. She wanted to go home, she wanted to run away, she wanted to turn back time, but all that was in front of her was the grey morning and the sound of people packing up camp.

Then the screams began.

The sounds seemed to come from everywhere at once, overwhelming her with uncertainty. Following her gut, and the training of more than a decade, she ran towards the sounds of misery but only after grabbing a bag that carried tools her father always used when he visited homes in Rome.

It felt like energy was flowing through her, even as the sound of horses and swords clashing mixed with the misery of the wounded and possibly dying. Whatever had descended upon them was working quickly. Screams seemed almost animal as men and women fought for their lives. The fate of women to bandits fleetingly passed through her mind with a dozen other worries, but her focus was to find the wounded. Wherever the dying were her father would be there too and that gave her strength. He would need his tools, she could help him. Purpose gave her confidence where her ignorance of battle gave her a false bravery.

Coming across the first man, a guard of the travelling governor who seemed especially young, she saw bone sticking up from his leg. More than that, he had the stunned look of a man caught by surprise on a head that was only partially attached to his body. The leg did not surprise her, but the sight of his other injury stunned her. The brutality of it all, the gore, the blood everywhere… it was so harsh and so real that the stories she had heard from her father about the battlefield suddenly became too real and too grim. A medic served the living not the dead, she had to steel her nerves and locate her father.

Fog was everywhere and she caught glimpses of savage men in unfamiliar clothes fighting Roman soldiers and chasing down other civilians and members of the governor's household. Carts were being looted, noise was everywhere but visibility was impossible. Her father would go to the governor first, she was sure, and she ran as fast as she could while trying to remain blind to the carnage around her.

Sure enough, intense fighting was going on around the governor with her father attending a fallen Roman man next to it all. It seemed insane, but she darted through the flying swords to land heavily next to him. His eyes widened in surprise, but as soon as he saw the bag he nodded and demanded a knife and a clamp from her. In the midst of the shock she felt the swell of pride, this was what she had trained for and she was making him proud.

The tenor of the fighting changed. It seemed as if there were people everywhere. Confusion, the cries of animals and people blending together, working intensely with her father to treat wounded men defending the governor: Sakura felt like if this was how they were going to die then maybe it was fate. The buzzing in her body, and how clear and simple the tasks were in front of her, the fatalistic thoughts were cut short when a man broke through the ranks and swords descended on them. A rough laugh echoed so close to her ears as her braid was grabbed, and it unwound from her head only to serve as a rope to drag her with.

She couldn't hear him over the din, but she saw her father scream her name as men surrounded him and the wounded and struck. The governor fell at the same moment, she suspected, yet for some reason there seemed to be more people than ever and the fighting continued. The fog was obscuring everything quickly as the pain in her head momentarily overwhelmed everything.

Yelling and laughing, in a language she couldn't understand, she knew where she was headed in the hands of these barbarians. The surgery knife she was still clutching wouldn't help her as her legs tangled in her robes preventing her standing. Thinking quickly, she grabbed the base of her hair and with a fast sawing motion severed the braid of hair that had been her only source of vanity.

Suddenly deprived of the weight, the man dragging her lost his footing and fell which gave her enough time to stand and sprint. After only a few steps she flew headlong into a bandit, and the knife she was clutching in front of her easily slid into his leather armor until it was hilt deep in his stomach.

At his cry of pain several more men appeared, as well as her first attacker who still held her braid in his hand but threw it down with a sickening smile when he spotted her again. All the men exchanged looks and when they spotted what she had accidentally done to their compatriot first they laughed and then one of them struck out at her hard with a slap that spun her to the ground. She regretted that the knife was in the man now slowly dying on the ground and not in her hand. Her face throbbing, she wondered how slowly and painfully she would have to die when she heard a scream right above her.

A swift kick to the ribs had her tucking herself into a ball, but it seemed it had been incidental because when she looked up all the men that had been surrounding her were now surrounding someone else. It wasn't anyone she knew from the caravan and if her spinning head could come to any conclusion all she could think was this was an evil spirit come to life. It moved too fast to be believed, cutting men down with a long sword. Covered in blood, it carved a path through the men like they hardly mattered, then methodically moving through the fallen ones to deliver death blows. It felt inhuman to bear witness to death like this, efficient and indiscriminate. Once they had been dispatched it moved swiftly towards her as if distance could be covered at the speed of thought.

This horrible grinning spirit looked down at her, bloodlust clearly unquenched, and she thought of the stories of the horrible things soldiers did in battle when they were possessed.

"Make it fast." She said, thinking soon she would see her family in the life after this one.

Her words seemed to startle him, his smile faltered and faded into a grim line. In the distance there were still the sounds of battle but nothing seemed close. The mist around them made her feel as if she were already dead, and this was some other world only occupied by her and this red warrior. His hand gripped the hilt of that long sword so tightly his dirty knuckles still looked white and she wondered if this was murder or mercy as she closed her eyes, body shaking with nerves more than fear.

The only pain she felt was in her jaw as his rough hand grabbed her face too hard. Her eye flew open to find him inches from her face, inspecting her coldly with his green eyes. His hands ran over her face, then down her arms, and he grunted softly when the blood covering her smudged to reveal nothing but minor scrapes from when she was being dragged. Her side was beginning to ache in earnest, but she wasn't about to invite him to touch her there.

When he seemed satisfied that she was fine, mouth still set into something that wasn't quite a scowl, he stood quickly and proceeded to wipe his sword on the grass.

"Come." Was all he said to her in Latin that she understood but was accented in the way of someone who had learned it after his native tongue. His armor screamed Roman cavalry, but everything else about him seemed foreign.

As she followed him into the dissipating morning mist all her overstimulated brain could do was wonder if his hair was red naturally or because of all the blood he was still covered in.

Picking herself up from the ground, Sakura looked down at her braid of hair with the gold pin winking at her as sunshine began to pierce the fog. It seemed dead and sinister, like a bad memory, and she wanted to leave it behind but then a better idea occurred to her and she grasped it tightly to her. Following the red warrior meant stepping past the bodies of her attackers, and her ribs throbbed with pain as she stepped past nearly a dozen corpses. How could one man cause such havoc?

As she emerged from the copse of trees she had been taken to and found the caravan's wreckage she saw the extent of the damage and felt the first stirrings of emotion. She clamped down on it, realizing that to give in to it now would make her a useless mess and she had to maintain the alert sense of danger until she knew what was going to happen to her. She could fall apart later, as she knew she would, but being Roman was about being strong and all she had left in this world was herself.

There were many men dressed like Roman infantry wandering around, but they had the same strange foreign looks as the red warrior. They spoke to one another in a language she did not speak, and she saw that while some were picking through the caravan's wreckage others seemed to be helping the few survivors of the bandits attack. Of the bandits there appeared only corpses, and she assumed any of them left alive had fled.

It occurred to her that the bloodstained man had stopped and was staring at her. Some of the infantrymen were glancing at them, and then quickly away and she felt self-conscious of the oblique attention. She stood there dumbly until he narrowed his eyes and gestured behind him at the caravan in general.

"Gather your things. Only what you can carry." He took a slightly more casual stance and appeared to be observing the infantrymen. She took that to mean he would wait for her, though she wasn't sure this was promising or alarming. Soldiers sometimes took women, she had heard, and she feared what the implications were of his attention. Maybe she should gather her things as he said and flee into the forest. If she hid until the next cart going south passed by then perhaps she could barter for passage back to Rome. While not rich, she was also not without enough means to reward a merchant or mail cart for safe passage. A lump formed in her throat as she thought of how she was now her family's sole heir.

Not the time to fall apart, Sakura. In her mind's eye she felt like wailing and rending the clothes from her body as she screamed her grief and rage to the gods. In her imagination, as she carefully sorted through her trunk, she was destroying every scrap of her old life in an attempt to deny this nightmare. In reality she had found a satchel and was putting the barest of necessities in it. Her gold and emerald jewelry, a bag of money, a brush, her skin scraper and oils, a small mirror, a few small family mementos… it turned out there wasn't much of a life that could fit in a single bag.

Her robes, covered in blood as they were, had to go and she drew the curtain over the cart as she found another robe, black as they all were right now, of the finest material she owned and dressed herself. Her skin was still scratched and bloodstained but nothing could be done with that for now. The man who had saved her was waiting for her, she assumed. It had been most of an hour as she scrounged what defined her life and packed it away.

Once Sakura had rejoined her warrior he nodded and started to move away quickly when she called out to him. "Wait! There's one more thing I need to do." He turned to her as if he didn't understand her properly. She motioned for him to follow, and for a second she thought he was going to leave her but then he seemed to reconsider and she led him to the main carriage where the governor's body still lay.

Her father was where she had left him. He was slumped over the body of his patient, blood surrounding them, but as she suspected the bag of tools had made it through untouched. Nothing there had looked valuable, and perhaps to other hands it truly wouldn't be, but she couldn't leave it behind.

From under her arm she produced her braid, brooch and all, and placed it upon his back. She didn't want to see his face, she didn't want to remember him any other way than alive and smiling at her and instead she handed the coin for Charon to the man next to her.

Hand outstretched she looked at him pleadingly, her own green eyes finally watering and betraying her. "Please, the blond man in black, can you put Charon's fee in his mouth for me?" Her voice wavered as she asked again. "Please?"

His hand covered hers for a moment, lingering, then he took the coin and while he did the requested task she picked up the bag of medical tools and saw they were all accounted for but for the longest blade still embedded in one of the bandits. She ticked it off in her mind as lost. Without turning around she asked, "Will your men burn the bodies today?"

"Yes." The curt answer brought her no comfort. A grand tomb next to her mother is what he should have had, not an ignoble cremation in the middle of nowhere.

The tears were flowing now and she couldn't stop them. In a haze she followed the man to his horse and mounted behind him. He said nothing to her and she cried the entire way to his camp, gasping in pain occasionally as he rode too hard for her bruised ribs. In a daze, she was shown to a tent where she collapsed onto a long chair and slept.


	2. Chapter 2

As Spring turned to late Spring, life was a blur of routine to Sakura. When she had mourned her mother she had had all the touchstones of her life in Rome to bring her outside of herself. Losing her father without that support structure left her with nothing but her mind to collapse in on and she found herself mute with grief for some time, followed by disinclined the speak as it became clear few people in the camp spoke Latin fluently.

The tent she occupied seemed to be the sole property of the red warrior, as she continued to call him in light of the fact that he did not speak to her, and it was as spacious and well appointed as she expected for an officer in a legion's base camp. Food was brought to her, baths as well, chamber pots were taken away, and she would take walks around outside unmolested as she observed life in the camp. She spent her days pouring over the two small medical texts she had hauled with her in her bag, and spinning when someone had the forethought to bring a wheel to the tent a few days in. The cramped writing gave her comfort, as if her father was speaking to her, and she processed her shock at the attack in general and at her accidental murder of the bandit with a surgical tool. The spinning was soothing if monotonous, and it took her back to her days practicing the skill with Ino. Her mother's voice droned in her memory about what good wives they would make someday. That someday should have been now, but somehow she had arrived to this place which while she occupied a strange role in a man's life she was certainly no wife to him. This cloistering slowly healed her shock, and recently she had been able to smile and wave at people on her walks even if she wasn't ready to talk to them. They barely made eye contact with her.

Some days the red warrior was with her, but most he was not. He would appear tired, bloodstained, and collapse onto couches or cushions but she never saw him sleep. When he appeared at first she would spend as much time ignoring him as she could, but one day after several weeks of this he was clutching a wound that was oozing something nasty looking and she recognized what needed to be done right away. Grasping her father's bag she moved over to him purposefully, and with a voice slightly scratchy from disuse told him to hold still.

Sakura took the pitcher of clean water that always sat waiting for her and brought it over to him. She heated and cleaned the tools she knew she would need and then proceeded to clean the wound of its infection and sew it closed. The man just watched her, flinching only occasionally, and while it didn't have the neat look she had hoped she knew at least he wouldn't lose the arm to a blood disease or ill humors.

He never made any improper gestures towards her, but after that day she found new black clothes and a small vial of oil to replace the one she had run out of from the daily practice of scraping her skin. Often she would check to make sure various wounds were healing correctly, but she always murmured her findings to him with the stiff clinical language she knew from her books. He watched her all the while, warily at first as if he were waiting for her to produce a knife from the folds of her robes, and then languidly as if he were tolerating her fussing as a favor to her. The intensity of his gaze never wavered.

She noted during this time that his hair was rust colored naturally, though it looked much darker when it was wet, as it often was when late Spring became relentlessly wet in a way she was unfamiliar with in this cooler climate. He smelled less of blood now that most of it was washing off in the torrential storms on the way back home, unfortunately he did smell more like wet horse.

Things probably would have progressed as they had for longer but for one day when Sakura heard bickering outside of the tent that, unusually, made its way inside the tent. It contained snatches of her native Latin but much of it seemed to be in the local language which she still did not speak.

A man, tall, who looked so much like her red warrior he must have been family, stepped purposefully into the tent followed by a man she had seen around the camp frequently. The smaller man appeared to be pleading with the taller man, but upon seeing her they both stopped in their tracks and she stood up from her spinning wheel slowly. If she needed to fight, which she didn't discount, her medical tools were across the tent. She carefully moved to a central position, eyes darting around like a trapped animal.

Her anticipation of aggression wasn't lost on the men, and the taller one seemed to visibly think a moment before speaking to her in passible but thickly accented Latin.

"I am here to meet my brother's concubine."

Sakura inflated in anger like an empty water bladder suddenly blown into. "Then you'll have to look in a different tent, you rude ass!"

Both men were visibly taken aback. "You enjoy the protection of my brother, yes?"

"Until you can treat me like a Roman citizen and a lady I see no reason why I should talk to you at all, you barbarian."

She was aware of the irony. Any other woman taken to a soldier's tent and residing in it probably was indeed providing the services they assumed she was giving. However, other than making a whole heck of a lot of thread for the camp and doing private medical consulting there wasn't anything else going on and it was about time to set things straight.

The two men exchanged a look and then the taller man saluted as if she were an officer, done for (she assumed) a mocking effect, and replied to her challenge. "I am Kankuro, cavalryman of the Imperial Roman Army, and who are you?"

"I'm Sakura Haruno, daughter of Seiji Haruno. Welcome to my tent. Please have a seat." All those years of training, and she couldn't kick it even when she was angry. She poured some water and brought over the tray of dried fruit that sat in the corner. Despite not liking this man, hospitality was the watchword of every Roman with guests.

"How is it that you found yourself acquainted with my brother, Sakura Haruno?" He looked at the food in front of him but did not touch it.

It was a raw scar, but she found she could actually speak of the time before her complete shutdown. "I was travelling with my father to his post as the governor's physician when we were attacked by bandits. Your brother saved me by fighting off a dozen men."

The two men looked at one another, Kankuro said something in their native tongue to the other man and mild shock flashed between them. Kankuro faced Sakura again this time seemingly taking her seriously at last.

"What is your opinion of my brother?"

"I don't see that as any of your business. What I will tell you is that I am well trained in my father's medical practices and I have recently been treating your brother's battle injuries."

His mouth dropped open entirely, disbelief coloring his face white and red in turns. The other man asked him a question and Kankuro just shook his head.

"Sakura Haruno, every day you face the wild boar tusk first and you don't even know it. If you live through the summer, the gods favor you. Gaara knows only how to destroy."

Saluting her again, this time without the twinkle in his eye, Kankuro took his leave all the while talking seriously with the man he had entered with. Rude bastard, he hadn't even touched the food.

Her warrior had a brother, and a presumptuous and annoying one at that. More importantly, he had a name. Sakura rolled it around her mouth, trying it out. Gaara. It sounded as barbaric as he was. Imagining the exhausted and tense man that dropped his body into the tent on random days as a raging bull didn't match her experience of him, but when she thought back to how they met and that look she had seen in his eyes she suddenly felt like perhaps the danger was much more real than she was assuming.


	3. Chapter 3

It was well and truly pink now, that's all she could make of her hair in the tiny hand mirror that she had brought with her. Not pink like a tongue, or pink like a blush, but pink like a wild flower. Maybe, she could make her need plain to the people in the camp and they could procure some red dyes. It almost seemed pointless, though, to maintain vanity when she looked so ragged. No cosmetics in any form were going to help this short hair, cut at an odd angle and growing out lopsided.

Finding a blade was easy enough, but in trying to twist herself around to locate a good position to even cut her hair while viewing herself in the propped up mirror she did nick herself a few times on the neck. Once, she got herself deeply enough that it certainly would have stained her robes had she been wearing white. All of Gaara's blades were impossibly sharp, partially thanks to her caring for them out of boredom. Sighing, she dabbed at the wound with a cloth and wondered how many years it would take to get her hair back to its glossy waist long glory.

Eventually, she sat down at the desk that lay near the entrance where light was more plentiful and continued to write to Ino:

_…I await a reply to the letter I managed to get out to you detailing the circumstances of my arrival at this military installation. I hope that you can be a voice of reason as I continue to struggle with the thought of returning to an empty house and the pity of our friends while knowing I have duties to attend to in Rome …_

Gaara, bursting into the tent with such force the papers she was working on went flying, stormed up to Sakura to regard her critically. Calloused hands, chapped and dirty, pinched her chin and thrust it from side to side as Sakura felt an indignant noise escape her lips. He drew a finger slowly across the long, shallow cut on her neck making it sting and seemed to grow very calm as the beginnings of a smile pricked at the corner of his lips. She slapped his hand away and stood up, noticing how while he didn't seem so very tall he managed to fill the whole tent with his presence.

Voices were approaching the tent and Sakura heard her name more than once as Gaara drew his sword and controlled his ragged breathing. It looked like rust or blood still clung to the tip and alarms sounded in her head as she put the pieces together.

"No one touched me, I promise y—" Her placating words were cut off as Gaara sprang out of the tent like a cat and the clash of metal soon followed.

Rushing out into blinding late morning light, Sakura joined dozens of people who were running towards the sounds of battle. Gaara and Kankuro were crossing blades and even though Kankuro had every advantage on strength, height, and age he appeared to be barely holding off the worst of the attack. Kankuro was yelling something at Gaara, who didn't bother to respond. The clatter of language all bearing a questioning and alarmed tone told Sakura that no one knew what this was about. The only person who didn't appear to be either surprised or alarmed was a striking woman with two thick blond braids, standing close enough to the fighting brothers she was getting dirt tossed on her from their scuffle.

While the fight was vicious, it was thankfully short. Gaara managed to trip Kankuro, sending him sprawling, and drew his blade swiftly down towards his prone sibling's head.

"No!" Sakura's scream sliced through everyone, and Gaara flinched.

The sword slowed its descent but it still drew a long bloody line on Kankuro's collarbone. It looked shallow but it was bleeding profusely. Sakura's trained eye knew it wasn't anywhere near fatal, but it easily could have been if he had used more force.

Gaara wandered over and stood in front of Sakura, glaring at her like she had been at fault for this, then turning his gaze on the other members of the camp who largely would not meet his pale green eyes without discomfort radiating from them.

Well, Sakura wasn't having any of it. She was afraid of him, that was for certain, but a deep stubborn streak in her didn't want to let him know.

"What was that about?" Her question seemed to shock him, and a murmur wove through the crowd before they silenced. Some people wandered over to Kankuro, ignoring Sakura and Gaara exchanging glares but more were entranced by their sudden interaction.

"Blood for blood. He knew his duty was to protect you. He failed." It probably made more sense in his native tongue, because this seemed silly to Sakura.

She pointed at her neck. "This was my mistake, a slip of the hand while cutting my hair! You're acting like, like, he tried to compromise my virtue!" A deep blush followed when she realized what she had said.

Gaara was having trouble tracking her words, she noticed, when she saw his brow stitch together at her last sentence. Smaller words, more direct, less references to her, uh, virtue.

"Your brother did protect me. I was the only danger to myself." She took his hand, the one not clutching a sword with white knuckles, and pleaded. "Believe me."

He pulled his hand from hers, as if she had burned him, and stalked to his tent. The crowd parted for him, and closed again behind as if some invisible barrier protected him. Sakura hadn't realized so many people lived here, and they were almost all looking at her with some cross between fear, admiration, and distaste. She was probably some sort of street performance to these people. They flowed around her, careful not to touch her, but staring just the same as they moved back to what they had been engaged in before the fight. Out of place, not wanting to confront Gaara again just yet, Sakura stood with her face to the sky and pleaded to the gods silently for some guidance.

"Come." It was the blond woman with braids. She was taller than Sakura, older, more statuesque. Any sort of unease Sakura might have felt following a stranger was mitigated by the knowledge that if anything else happened to her Gaara would probably kill the person. Cold comfort.

As they walked Sakura finally saw properly that she lived in a bubble inside a bubble. The actual military camp, while laid out as every other they had passed through on their journey with the caravan, was quite small. The rectangular border's end was easily visible as she walked to the edge of the village. She had assumed it was all military buildings earlier, but the shallow ditch giving the nod to the border made her feel like she had officially stepped out of Roman territory into the unknown. It was as if a small encampment had been plopped alongside an existing village. She supposed that was in fact the reality.

Sakura felt exposed, foreign, and she tried to hold her head up as the lady led her to a large structure. The village was full of empty space, sprawling and massive, and nothing was orderly or laid out in straight lines. Perhaps if she had grown up here this would seem less random, but her mind couldn't create any sense of hierarchy other than some homes were larger than others.

The blond woman motioned that she should enter one of the largest homes she had seen yet on their walk and they sat down together, presumably to wait. It wasn't long until Kankuro practically collapsed into the door as he entered and made a grimacing face when he saw Sakura waiting inside.

"My sister is meddling." Kankuro gestured as the woman. "She thinks you'll doom us." His voice was airy but as he touched his collar he hissed in pain.

The blond woman said something to Kankuro who seemed to disagree, but the woman was insistent.

"Temari wants you to leave with the next trading caravan. She said she will offer you coin, food, and a travelling companion to Rome. You can be gone before the next full moon."

Sakura didn't like where this was going. Even if she wanted to leave she didn't like being asked to leave. "How can I be dooming you when I do nothing but sit in a tent all day? And why does she not tell me these things herself? She spoke to me before."

"Our father did not have time to teach us much of the language of your Empire. Gaara and I learned while travelling with your troops. Temari understands much, but she had no practice speaking."

He seemed to not want to address the other part of her question, and Sakura bristled. "Is this an option or an order?"

Kankuro and Temari consulted with one another, while Kankuro wandered about locating water and a rag to clean his wound. At first Sakura wanted to offer to help dress it, but since they were discussing whether she needed to be thrown out of the village like a criminal she suddenly felt less than charitable.

They seemed to come to a consensus. "If you don't look like you want to leave, Gaara may not let you. The monster may not let you leave even if you want to."

"You talk about him like he has no reason, no thoughts. Let me talk to him and make up my own mind." Sakura's brain flashed to today's sudden bloody battle and she wondered at the truth of her convictions about this man when these two people had known him their whole lives.

The siblings shrugged and Kankuro gestured towards the door as if talking to her was a lost cause. Sakura wished heartily that she could punch a hole in the door just to show him that she wasn't someone to be disrespected and dismissed so easily, but she held her temper. Temari said something and Kankuro laughed, even as Sakura had one foot out onto the sun shining on the packed dirt street.

"You might call him a monster, but you two are an insult to hospitality everywhere, and right now given the choice I prefer the monster!"

They burst out laughing after a pause of shock, which told Sakura her scathing comment had not had the intended effect. She stormed her way through their tacky village back to the familiarity of the Roman tents wondering what in the world this place was and if she really dreaded returning home so much she would continue to stay here.

Outside the tent, she paused. Sakura had never been nervous before upon entering so she scolded herself for losing nerve. She would talk with Gaara, (something she'd never actually done) and arrange a time she could return home (something she didn't want to do yet), as well as a tent of her own as soon as it could be constructed, (something she wasn't sure if she wanted).

Oh yes, armed with all that wobbly conviction she was bound to have fantastic results she thought to herself sarcastically. She rubbed her forehead absently as she tried to nail down something she was actually certain about.

Sakura jumped back a few paces, startled, as Gaara threw open the tent and pinned her to the ground with his glare.

"Inside." That was an order not an invitation.

"I'm, er, enjoying the sunshine." That was lame, Sakura, her inner voice chided. You're not kidding anyone. "I'll be in soon, and then I have some questions."

Gaara regarded her with a slow gaze that traveled around her face questioningly, unblinkingly, before nodding and retreating back into the tent.


	4. Chapter 4

Food appeared, and they ate.

Gaara ate exactly enough to maintain himself but he seemed to take no joy in it. Sakura liked food well enough but usually found it more time consuming than enjoyable. Today she drew out this midday meal far longer than ever before, feeling his eyes on her every mouthful she took. Even sipping water every mouthful she knew it would stick in her throat.

Eventually he got tired of watching her chew and moved over to a table covered in maps. He started taking notes, no doubt planning his next maneuver, and she knew he would be at this until she wanted to interrupt him. Gaara was oddly meticulous for someone who also seemed so wild in the heat of battle. The fear he generated would have given him power but power alone would not keep someone in a leadership position this far away from the venal committees of Rome.

It would be very easy to bow out of talking at all. She could write a letter or spin all day and no one would know. She could claim that they spoke and he refused; who would question him? But the idea that she had no backbone hurt her pride and she knew that there was no way she could let it go. The coward's way out was a dream.

"Gaara," She had never spoken his name so intentionally and it grated on her nerves.

He looked up from what he was doing and she felt like, for the first time since he saved her, he really saw her as a person. These weeks here she had been furniture, until his brother had come to visit her and then she had been Gaara's furniture. The protective instinct might not give her a buffer against whatever madness plagued him, but maybe the way she had healed him and the peaceful time they had spent would mitigate the temper others feared.

"Why did you bring me here?"

The question caught them both off guard. She had meant to talk about his siblings, or ask about how he entered the elite Roman cavalry, but it seemed her subconscious had had other ideas. He betrayed a crack of emotion, sliding his eyes away from hers and drawing his lips together tightly.

"I don't know."

"You didn't bring me here to be your, uh, spoils." He snorted as if she had said something surprising and a little funny. "And there was no way you knew that I was as good a doctor as many you'd visit in Rome, if a bit untried. So why bring me here?"

He didn't like that she hadn't dropped the subject yet, and she could see him clench his hands and unclench them slowly. "I didn't kill you."

"That's a reason?!" Folding her hands in front of her chest she let her exasperation spill out.

"It is for me." Gaara seemed almost apologetic about that comment. "You're not just another victim. You could have been, but you weren't. I don't know what that means, and until I know I thought it was better to keep you close."

_Victim._ Is that how he saw people? Real warriors, not the career military men who did it because it was expected or because of pride in the empire but the people who took to fighting because something inside of them was hungry for it, she had thought they were broken. Her father's whole life, and a lot of hers, had been devoted to putting people back together and the idea of someone driven to do the opposite by some quirk of personality made her feel profoundly sad. That the gods chose certain people to destroy and others to heal rang hollow.

There was a moment of silence as they both sank into their own thoughts. "Your sister thinks I should go back to Rome." Sakura said softly.

If it had been an attempt to gauge his reaction it wasn't working well because all he offered her was a slow blink. His hand, which rested on the map table, rustled some papers.

"I _should_ return. There are a lot of details about the estate I need to see to, even if it isn't huge, and I'm the only heir." _And I'll be hounded to marry immediately, mourning or no,_ her brain supplied unasked.

She stood suddenly, wanting to pace as if motion were an answer to his preternatural stillness.

"I can't stay here forever anyway; I don't know how to live in this world. What I know is the city." Sakura had the feeling like she was trying to convince herself more so than Gaara. "My friends and what remains of my family still live in Rome, or at least near to it. I'm surprised Ino hasn't rushed up here despite—"

Whatever she was going to say next died with a squeak as the map table's slender wooden legs snapped under the pressure of Gaara's hand bearing down on it. A vein stood out on his lean bicep, pulsing, and he took a deep shuddering breath before he could look her in the eyes again.

"No." Gaara visibly struggled to find the words, his accent thick. "You need to be here."

"In case you noticed, I'm no longer frozen in grief every waking minute of the day. I'm not one of your troops, and I'm not part of your village." Not wanting to leave was losing out to not wanting to be ordered to stay amd she felt anger spark, familiar and empowering. "I'll send you a reward that will more than make up for everything you've done for me."

He stared down at the map table and then ran stiff hands through his hair. Choking on the words he yelled out, "I don't want gold, I want…" he made a feral noise in the back of his throat and swiftly moved to her side. One hand grabbed her by the hair, forcing her to look at him as he searched her face for something only he could elaborate on. Disgusted, either with Sakura or himself, Gaara released her suddenly letting her stumble to the side and took up his sword as he exited with force. The tent shook, and so did Sakura.


	5. Chapter 5

Once she knew she was in a cage, all she could think of was how to escape.

Everything she owned could fit into one bag, that hadn't changed, but now she was thinking more on that as a strategic advantage than a tragedy.

Mail was collected and delivered once a month; she had maybe a week or two until it came again. Temari and Kankuro were happy to help her leave, but they would take no obvious risks to help her due to having no special protection from Gaara's rage despite being family.

The trick to escaping, she told herself, would be making it seem like it was the last thing on her mind. The best way to blend would be to start insinuating herself into the surrounding environment. No one was keen on helping her learn the language, but Temari tolerated her better than most and allowed Sakura to tag along and point out objects with corresponding vocabulary. Temari didn't seem to live like the other women in the village, instead taking watches and patrols like a Roman soldier. Sakura had heard that tribes outside of Rome allowed their women to fight occasionally, but to see one in action was surreal. She was struck by how boring the life of a soldier was, with mostly walking, waiting, watching the woods, and chores occupying Temari's days. It afforded a lot of intensive language learning time for Sakura but there didn't appear any other benefit to her eyes.

When Temari finished her shift and went to train in the practice yard, Sakura took some time to wander the perimeter on her own and process what she had learned that day, a practice that she had taken to in the hope that it would structure her thoughts. The weather was clement these days, misty in the morning and burning off to mild afternoons. Suddenly spending so much time walking after being so sedentary had resulted in blisters on her feet but Sakura clung to the minor annoyances as reinforcement for her mission to escape. Anything the sparked her ire alleviated some of her fear.

Days spent this way felt engaging and almost restful in contrast to the evenings.

Threat of removal had given Gaara urgency to be around her. Sakura at least understood that much, recalling all too well how much more she wanted to do something when she was told she couldn't as a child. Everything about Gaara seemed to be so close to the surface, just a trigger away from any number of reactions and no warning for when he transitioned from placid to volcanic. Temari had tried to explain it to her one day, and even though Sakura had made great strides she didn't really get what having a "boar inside" meant. Maybe he was possessed by a minor god? That seemed to be the general village consensus, and Sakura remained deeply skeptical.

Possessed would be a kind word for him, with deranged floating to the top of her mind more often than not, swiftly followed by awkward. Gaara reminded her oddly of her friend Lee. Both of them seemed to be single minded to the point of peculiarity, both of them were obsessed with fighting, and both of them had no idea how to interact with other people like they were regular people.

In the afternoon, when troops were all expected to undergo their self-directed training in the small practice yard, Sakura would wander but she would also observe. Gaara may have been the leader, but he did not interact with anyone around him. Kankuro would teach, Temari would spar with anyone, but Gaara always had an area to himself as he moved through practice drills mechanically. Maybe the siblings together made up one functioning leader.

Evenings in the tent were tense. Sakura would write out accounts of the day, usually logging new words learned or interesting goings on about the village she noted, and Gaara would write out correspondence with Rome, orders to be given, decisions on village problems, or other paperwork she couldn't even guess at. One night she found him doing accounts, with numbers scratched out and placed randomly all around the page. She had only been coming near him for the water pitcher, but that part of her that demanded that order come from chaos meant she couldn't ignore him as she had been trying to the other nights.

"I did my own family's household accounts, you know."

Silence.

"My mother insisted I start practicing when I turned twelve. She said I'd need to know how to manage all the people who brought goods to the house."

He bent over the table lower, like her words could be deflected by his rust colored hair.

"I'm sure you can do it, but it would be nice to be of some use instead of sitting here and—"

"Would it stop you talking?" Gaara interrupted, peevish but not appearing overly upset.

"Yes." Sakura managed to say it sweetly.

The book of accounts landed in front of her unceremoniously, dusty, with all sorts of odd stains. She began to calculate and slowly a very strange picture emerged of Gaara's household. It only took a couple hours to make some fast decisions, the candle slowly slumping at the desk in front of her.

"You buy a lot of meat." She remarked. He didn't just buy a lot; it was almost all he bought until recently when she had arrived. "Cured meats seem to make up most of your meals."

"Cured meat lasts on the road."

"And how much time have you spent on the road in the past year?" He didn't respond. "And it looks like whoever is supplying you with bread is ripping you off. They have been increasing the price slowly so you won't notice. But if you compare last year around this time the difference is pretty significant."

That got a rise out of him. She saw the way his eyes flashed, going hard and scary.

"Don't do it. Don't you dare. I'll talk to the baker tomorrow if you like. Numbers are their own language." She almost smiled. "You handed me your accounts, and that's like giving a soldier orders. You can't do my job for me."

The tension in his form didn't go away, but it shifted as if it had nowhere to go but no longer had a focus either. Sakura was troubled by how easily she allowed herself to interact with him. Everything about him should have bothered her: the way he always had one eye on her, the way he ignored her and at the same time he hovered over her, the way he was keeping her here in this town against her wishes. Mostly she just felt bad for him at times like these: no family that wanted anything to do with him, all the responsibilities of leading troops and running a village, and nothing to look forward to other than fighting and paperwork. Presumably he liked the fighting, at least.

_You're sympathizing with the enemy._ Her inner voice reminded her none too gently. And you know I saw you examining the muscles on his arms earlier, too. That realization came as a slight shock.

Checking to make sure the wound had healed. That's all that was.

_If he weren't forcing you to stay would you want to leave?_ Before she could chase that line of thinking down the rabbit hole she was jerked back into reality by the proximity of Gaara's face to hers. She must have just glazed over again while thinking her own thoughts, but then there was a certain stealthy quality to him as well.

"And they think I'm unbalanced." Something that might have been a smile but which looked more like the corner of his mouth twitching upward signaled her to the fact that Gaara had just made a joke at her expense.

"If you don't want someone to try to slip something into your bread then you need to be nice to the people that make your food, even if they are being crooks." Something about what she said made his sudden openness retreat immediately. He withdrew physically as well, leaving Sakura with a rapid heartbeat and a feeling like she had just missed an opportunity.

They didn't speak the rest of the evening. As Sakura went over the recent account entries she came away with the disturbing knowledge that he had spent a lot more money on her while she had been here than he ever spent on himself alone. No one outside of her family had ever given her so much, thought she couldn't honestly say he asked so little.

Sleep was restless every night, reinforced by the fact that every time she woke up he was just sitting there working on documents. Once (or more than that truthfully) she had found him glancing her way, and while the idea of him watching her sleep was undoubtedly creepy he never appeared to move from his position on the other side of the tent. Weighing sleeplessness and the resulting destruction of her mental abilities with the calculated risk that things would continue on as they had, Sakura landed on sleeping near him as an acceptable situation to bear.

Dreams had not been providing her with any enlightenment. Her brain was pumping out a steady stream of uselessness. No brilliant escape plan had appeared in her normally very fertile mind.

Crankily, she gestured at the overly expensive bread she fully intended to talk to someone about and tried to ask Gaara to hand it over to her using the limited vocabulary that Temari had been working on with her.

He may have greeted her with the same brooding look he had on last night when she woke up and joined him at the table for breakfast, but Gaara's face split into a wide smile at her words. There was too much tooth involved for it to be pleasant, but it seemed genuine.

At first Sakura had thought he hadn't heard her so she repeated it once more and pointed emphatically. Hungry, and losing patience, she reached out for it herself only to find her wrist tightly gripped by his calloused hand. Still smiling, he picked up the bread and placed it in her hand only releasing her after he met her eyes deliberately and responded with something she couldn't translate. Goosebumps ran up her arm, across her back, and covered her neck.

"Your accent is horrible." Nothing nice to say, how expected.

"At least I'm trying."

"Your grammar is wrong."

"Blame Temari then."

"I'm coming with you today to the baker."

"Absolutely not!"

Gaara seemed not to care that she was disagreeing with him. The smile was more a smirk at this point but it hadn't disappeared. "You can't even ask for food."

"My pointing skills are very advanced." She stuffed some food in her mouth to keep from arguing. It was too much like a breakfast at home with her mother, something that she had had not too long ago. Being so casual with this man made her feel younger, unguarded.

She ate too fast and grabbed the accounts book, trying to make this end as quickly as possible if he were coming with her. The morning was surprisingly cool and dewy, making her shiver as she stepped into the light. Gaara was right behind her, walking with her like a guard might. He strapped his sword on but she saw with relief that he was forgoing the cloak and helmet. It would have been too silly to have him with her in full regalia, like he was going to war. The sword was threatening enough.

Once they left the small encampment, suddenly there were more people on the street and children playing or running errands. It was as if Rome only touched this village when they were at war. Rome had more to offer than weapons, and she heaved a sigh as she tried to remember where the baker lived. Gaara stood behind her, silently waiting for her to move.

"You could stand next to me, you know. It isn't as if there is anyone within a bodylength of us preventing it." Gaara seemed to inspire that.

His sword clanked in the sheath softly as he moved up next to her. She gave a little smile of encouragement at him, glad he was no longer at her back. His brow knit as if he were trying to figure something out.

"And now maybe could you show me to the baker?" She hated admitting she couldn't do something, and she felt like she had to tangibly swallow her pride to let him lead the way.

The stares that received on their stroll made her deeply regret this activity. Small children watched her open mouthed, while most adults knew better and just snuck glances at her as they passed. It wasn't Sakura herself inspiring all the gawking, she had been in the village long enough to be old news, but Gaara walking with her through the streets seemed to scandalize everyone. Having spent so much of her life being socially forgettable, she had always wanted to be known. It seemed to her that it was not as fun as it had appeared now that she had achieved it, if on a much smaller level than some of the great women in Rome.

"We're here." He stopped suddenly and she bumped into his shoulder hard. His arm shot out to steady her, and it seemed to Sakura like people nearby had withdrawn from them even more.

"I can't stop you from coming in with me," She prefaced. "But I don't want you to say a word until I have a chance. Can you agree to that?" She didn't want it to seem like a favor, because it wasn't.

He gestured for her to enter, and she took his silence as agreement. "You'll see." She tried to give herself confidence by setting her shoulders back and putting on her most winning smile.

The baker's face fell and froze when he saw who had entered the shop. Sakura marched up to him with the book of accounts and he looked at it, her, and then Gaara before doing what she assumed he thought was the only sensible thing and ran out the back.

"Well," was all Sakura could say when she had recovered from the shock. "At least it didn't end in…" Gaara wasn't behind her, she noted.

These were not shoes suitable for running, was her only thought as she screamed Temari's name through the streets. Someone would get her, she was sure, and somehow they would stop Gaara from whatever he had planned. The man really shouldn't have run. It was like a mouse darting in front of a cat, and Gaara was just following his nature as a predator. _Human, dummy, he's human!_ She had to remind her brain to stop treating him like everyone else did.

Kankuro was the one who found her, breathless and clutching her aching side in the middle of the street. She got out enough of what happened that Kankuro took up the chase with her, a stony expression on his face. He feared the worst, obviously. It couldn't have been an hour when he swore he'd be back and still was not when she saw the almost unbelievably odd sight of the baker, hands bound behind, being marched through the street with Gaara behind, sword out but not bloodied.

It looked as though the baker has slid through the mud on one side, but thankfully there was no rusty blood implying Gaara's ever sharp sword had been used in any other fashion than prod.

"You were not at the store." Gaara remarked when he was close enough for Sakura to hear. "Show him the book now, he won't run again." He remarked something in his own tongue that made the baker whimper.

Kankuro and Temari appeared down the street behind Gaara and skidded to a halt when he whipped his head around to glare at them. Temari's mouth fell open in clear shock and then snapped up as she schooled her face into something more neutral. Kankuro laughed nervously next to her.

Sakura numbly approached the muddy, terrified man and showed him the account page entries. She showed him the newest entry, scratched it out and entered a new amount. His eyes flicked to the side as if that would allow him to see the sword at his back and he nodded his assent to the new payment amount.

"Tell him we expect the refund by the end of tomorrow." Sakura said, watching Gaara lower his sword and give the man a growled order. He sank to his knees in relief, trembling as Gaara cut the bonds holding his hands behind him.

He looked far too smug, Sakura thought. "You know he would have had to come back to the shop eventually."

"This way was more fun." Gaara said with a shrug, letting the pieces of rope fall to the ground unheeded.

"Not for him."

"No one else will dare cheat me now." He said to her simply, as if the ends justified it all.

Sakura huffed. "You'll be lucky if he doesn't spit into your bread every day." She said it under her breath but she was sure he heard her somehow as the corner of his mouth twitched up. The day had been mortifying and it wasn't even half done. It was a small mercy that at least no one in Rome knew of all the ridiculously silly and dangerous situations she had been put through since coming here. Ino would have pretended not to know her.

As Temari casually strolled by them, on her way back to patrol duty, it was like she was channeling Ino as she whispered into Sakura's ear. "Next time you go for an outing with your sweetheart, try to cause a little less chaos."

Sarcastic or not it hit a nerve as Sakura turned the same color as her hair from her forehead down.


	6. Chapter 6

The mail was supposed to arrive any day, and Sakura became glum. Not only had Gaara's mood become more severe as he noted her apparent misery, but the almost companionable interactions they had had after the baker incident had devolved back into tense avoidance.

Two days ago she made a terrible miscalculation, thinking him gone for the whole day scouting out some territory (as Temari had told her), only to have him return while she was oiling her skin. There had been shrieking on her part, something she was not proud of, and Gaara had turned as white as wool before turning around on his heel and exiting the tent. She hadn't seen him for nearly a full day after that, and when he did return he was looking at her warily, like she had sprung some sort of trap on him.

It didn't matter how much of her had been covered when he had come in, because no amount of clothing would make her feel the same around him.

Temari found her concerns about Gaara seeing her under-garmented quaint. Once she understood what had happened, being the only person Sakura felt like she could talk to about it, and she had stopped laughing, she said simply: Gaara has been to war. That had taken further elaboration, which Temari actually blanched at explaining to someone like Sakura who had not ever gotten close to a battlefield even if she had seen soldiers with injuries when she was at home and they came to her father for treatment. Gory breaks and deep oozing wounds were all Sakura knew of a soldier's life. By the time they had finished talking Sakura had learned the word for "prostitute" in a new language and was just more confused by Gaara's reaction to her since now it didn't even seem logical.

There was public art less decent than she had been, but he was acting like she carried a disease communicable by looking at her. More upsetting to Sakura was not that he was acting like a child about this but that by being the offended one he had robbed her of the ability to be indignant! Annoyed, slightly churlish, Sakura decided to press her advantage while she had it. If he became aggravated to the point he didn't want her around then maybe she'd be put on the road to Rome without a struggle, (though the idea that he tossed her out due to physical revulsion was highly ego bruising.)

Catching a man's attention was not something she had been trained to do directly, but she was smart enough to have observed how it worked. Ino had been practicing feminine wiles with an eye to making an advantageous marriage for a few years now, and Sakura wondered if attractiveness weren't its own sort of weapon in a war she had kept well out of in favor of a family first ethic. Looking pretty wasn't enough when the target was keeping their distance, so after a silent breakfast Sakura began to strategize. The best chance would be in the evening when he returned and couldn't avoid her, and Sakura gathered her courage throughout the day for what seemed like a spectacularly bad idea, (but the only idea she'd had therefore deceptively tempting).

"You moved things." Gaara, with his uncanny attention to detail, stared at her in accusatory displeasure upon returning at sundown.

Sakura's face twisted into a scowl only briefly before she forced herself to smile. "I thought maybe a nice meal tonight would be good for both of us. I spent my own money to purchase it, so I insist."

He couldn't refuse that, no one could, though he managed to look even more displeased. Shifting on the balls of his feet as if he were preparing to fight as she approached, Sakura brought a basin of water over to him and set it on the small table she had moved from near the bed.

Swallowing hard and reminding herself to breathe, Sakura took ahold of one of his hands and plunged it into the bowl between them to clean up before the evening meal. Dumbstruck, he just watched her wash off his hand but snatched it back dripping when he came back to reality.

"Stop." He hissed.

As she retreated towards the table where she had laid out the food she felt little jolt of triumph. It seemed to be working! She'd be out of this place in no time at all! With a more genuine smile, she beckoned him to the table.

Gaara sat, back straight as a column, regarding her with deep mistrust and evaluating the spread before him. Sakura had gotten roasted pork, an assortment of winter vegetables, and dried fruit (the only truly pricey thing she had found in the village) all of which she had supervised the preparation and presentation of so that it would look both appetizing and artistic.

"I promise you won't need your sword at dinner." She wasn't sure if that oversight had been intentional on his part when he looked at her with narrowed eyes.

Once he returned Sakura began to engage in prattle, trying to think of every amusing story she could think of about home. She lead with the time she and Ino had been caught stealing pears from the larder, and how the cook had chased them around hitting them on the head with a spoon until they had promised never to steal anything again. Her friends and their quirks followed from Hinata's debilitating shyness to Ten Ten's obsession with all the latest brushes and tools she used in her artwork. Chouji's terrible food experiments were next as Gaara made his way through the food as if she had assigned him a mission to eat.

"You must have had childhood friends," she led, sipping wine to wet her dry throat.

"We're not talking about my childhood." He stabbed the carving knife into what was left of the pork and left it there, sticking out sideways.

Sakura cleared her throat. "What about your friends now? You must have someone you can talk to."

"No." He hesitated after delivering the definitive with conviction. "Not here, anyway."

"So what about me?" Sakura felt his gaze practically burn a hole in her from across the table. "Am I your friend?"

"I don't know what you are." He admitted, his voice sounding strained.

Emotions were his weakness, she reminded herself. Time to make him squirm. She fortified this foolishness with another deep drink of wine, and put on what she hoped was a sexy expression. Picking up a shriveled brown thing that used to be a fig, she nibbled it and felt her stomach churn as his expression became stormy.

"You haven't had dessert yet." Her inner voice gave something between a laugh and a groan when she added "Don't you see anything you want?"

Maybe she had gone too far or even read the situation wrong, she admitted to herself, when with a sudden lurch Gaara upended the entire heavy dining table and deposited all the food on the ground in a clatter of serving trays and utensils. The table landed on top of what was left of the food with a thunk, and Sakura squished the remains of her fig in one hand as Gaara stood up and strode over to her across the space the table had occupied moments before.

Her heart was in her throat as he lifted her bodily by her upper arms and brought his mouth down forcefully on hers. This close she could see the deep tired lines in the dark skin around his eyes, and his skin felt impossibly hot on her own. Once she got the presence of mind to struggle, he responded by clamping down on her arms more tightly and pulling himself off of her mouth with a shuddering breath.

"I want…" the words seemed to bring him pain, and she never would have guessed the tremor running through him except for how close together they were made it impossible to ignore. "Nothing," he said it harshly, an intense whisper throwing blame at her for something she didn't understand.

The next kiss was less suffocating as he released her arms and buried his hands into her hair, practically cradling her cheeks with his palms. Her eyes began to close on their own as she leaned in just barely, reacting on instinct now that logic had been erased by shock.

When he let her go she dropped boneless to the seat still underneath her. She was convinced the softness she had just experienced was an illusion when he looked down on her with such pure hate she thought her days on the earth were done.

"Get your things and go to Temari." She didn't know what the consequences of staying meant, but any eventuality was frightening. He turned on his heel and left the tent, taking nothing with him but obviously unwilling to be there with her one moment longer.

She was tearing up on the walk through camp, but by the time she had crossed the border into the village she had bottled up her emotions with the same steely determination that kept the memories of that horrible day with the caravan largely unacknowledged. What she couldn't deny was that she had won the day and succeeded in gaining freedom, but that it felt Pyrrhic.

***

"Scouts spotted the wagon up ahead. It's being accompanied by a small force, which is ideal for you." Kankuro brought her the news with a smile.

Sakura had already traded a very nice ring to Temari for a horse, with the intention of riding near the mail wagon, but if there were soldiers escorting the wagon then she could know she'd be afforded all the protection of a Roman citizen. It was like fate was smiling on her departure, with Sakura grumping back at it.

"_You look like him,_" Temari said, in her own tongue and Sakura gave her an extra sour look. Temari said something she couldn't follow and laughed to herself. There was no need to elaborate who him was and Sakura just wanted to put the whole thing behind her. Going back home to rebuild was her future.

Laughter was coming from down the road, and multiple wagons were creating dust as they made their slow way in. A weird feeling of familiarity tickled at the back of Sakura's brain and as she nervously made doubly sure everything was packed securely for her journey it finally hit her.

Merely suspicion folded into disbelieving realization as the only man she had ever known who could light up a room like a sun with his smile came into view.

"Sakura?!" Naruto stopped in his tracks, practically leapt off his horse and ran towards her to sweep her up into a hug. "I had read something horrible from Hinata not long ago, but I'm glad she heard wrong. What are you doing here? Are you travelling to Rome? Where's your father?"

He punctuated each question with a squeeze before letting her down to get some air. Temari had somehow disappeared when she looked to her for support from the onslaught of cheerfulness that was her oldest friend and brother in every sense but blood.

"What are _you_ doing here?" She dodged the answers to his questions she didn't want to even broadly outline without some time to compose herself. "I thought you had been sent east!"

Naruto made a face, "I've pulled messenger duty for a little while now, but it has its upside. I've seen a lot of fantastic places and fought next to dozens of infantry units. They won't be able to keep me from a promotion much longer if I keep it up!" The world had never seen a volunteer cavalryman like Naruto, and Sakura was happy he was alive and chasing his childhood dream, emphasis on alive.

"What possible message could you need to deliver here?" Sakura looked around the village which seemed as placid as ever. "There are practically no soldiers here."

"This village probably has a dozen field units out at any time. Standing forces are small but that's because it's a pretty obscure location, and unlikely to be attacked. You know, hidden." He clapped her on the back. "Besides, even if someone found it, it would be suicide to attack anything under Praefectus Gaara. Might as well slit your own throat and get it over with. This is one of the safest places in the whole empire. Are you heading straight to Rome or can you stay a few days?"

"I, uh…" It was like they had seen one another only yesterday, and not years ago. Naruto was so tall now, he actually seemed like a man and not a boy. However, what would never seem adult is how he ran at the mouth when he got excited, and the conversational left turn had her stuttering.

"If you can hold on a bit I'm sure I can have Gaara order me as escort back home. It would be nice to see Hinata and everyone." The glimmer in his eye told her the 'and everyone' was probably optional. "We're friends so I'm sure he wouldn't mind."

Naruto, who assumed everyone was basically good sometimes even when provided evidence to the contrary, must have been mistaken. They might both be cavalry, but Gaara wasn't exactly collegial.

Her doubt permeated her voice as she repeated to him, "You're his friend."

"You'll see," Naruto said, "If you haven't met him yet I think you'll find him kind of silent at first but he's a good guy. I saved his life once, you know, let me tell you about that…" His chest puffed up and he clapped an arm around her shoulders, stopping her protests simply by talking over them.

***

"Out!"

"I told you so."

"Gaara, I don't understand, Sakura said you saved her life."

"Uzumaki, you may stay but _she_," the word slid through his mouth like something distasteful, "Has to go."

Naruto, confused and caught between his oldest friend and a superior officer, pleaded with her by way of puppy eyes to just wait outside again. Voices rose and fell in the tent as Naruo and Gaara talked it out, and Sakura was suddenly glad she had at least told him a little bit about what had brought her here even if she hadn't mentioned anything about what had kept her here this long. Mental distress and inclement weather had been her way of brushing away the last few months of her life, finding it too weird to explain her twisted romantic involvement.

"Sounds like you're stuck until the blond idiot decides to leave, eh?" Kankuro had fallen in step with Sakura and she wandered back to Gaara's family home. If he was trying to make her smile, he wasn't succeeding.

"Sounds like it."

Kankuro continued on with a smirk on his face, clearly enjoying his own jokes. "Well, you don't eat much and whatever it is that makes you organize things has benefitted the house so I suppose Temari and I can tolerate you."

Upon entering, Sakura walked back to the empty room she had been occupying in Gaara's family home. It was some sort of closet that they had brought a bed into, and her small bundle of stuff sat in the corner, letting her know that someone (either Temari or Kankuro) had probably stabled her horse and moved her things. For acting like they were above everything they certainly helped her out a lot, and Sakura liked them well enough. There had been too much emotion to deal with recently and she found that, despite being midday she was incredibly tired but not at all sleepy.

There was a lone window, and in the puddle of light on the floor she spread out a blanket and began to meticulously polish and lay out all of her father's medical tools which had now become hers. The world, and one man in particular, may have lost it but medicine always made sense. Sakura had a decent idea on how to fix people's bodies, but it turned out she was pretty terrible at some of the less tangible things.

"You're sad." Temari, catching Sakura by surprise, stood in the doorway to the room and surveyed the neatly displayed instruments.

"Yes, I guess I am."

Temari struggled with the Latin but clarified, "No. You are pitiful."

"HEY."

"Our druid said he would speak with you."

Sakura, who mistrusted what she knew of druids, didn't look as excited as Temari felt she ought to be. Some of her nervousness was alleviated when Kankuro joined them, saying he had been recruited as translator. As the siblings led her outside of town to a small clearing that contained a lone hut, Sakura was even less sure of everything. There were skins outside the hut, drying in the sun, and a pungent smell that seemed like herbs with underlying rot. If anything was against the gods she had grown up with, surely this must be.

Temari took up what looked like a guard post near the door, and Kankuro knocked and waited. Sakura had never seen Kankuro knock so she figured this person must either be scary or important. The door opened and she arrived firmly at scary. He wore a long brown robe tied with leather at the waist, and the red hair looked spikey and silky over a pretty, boyish face. The man smiled, showing lines around his face that gave away his age a little at last, and gestured them in.

He spoke in a lilting tone, the rise and fall of it somewhat entrancing, and Sakura looked around the hut as Kankuro and the druid conversed. Dried animals, pelts, and bundles of herbs all hung from the ceiling and swayed slightly. There were spider webs in the corners, fat black spiders catching the bugs that were circling the carcasses. It was the combination of things that seemed wrong, she arrived at. Seeing skins at a leatherworker or herbs with an herbalist was the way of things, but seeing the strange sharp knives mounted on the wall next to hooks and sickles made her feel like this was a tiny piece of underworld.

"Sasori said he is happy you came to see him at last."

"Has he been asking for me?" Sakura hadn't heard anything about that.

"Ever since you arrived, Gaara has barred him entrance to see you."

A warm glow of appreciation sparked unbidden in her chest before she stomped on it. "I'm not important, and I'll be leaving soon."

Kankuro repeated her words to the druid. Sasori smiled his peculiar smile and said something for Kankuro to translate while looking her in the eyes, unblinking.

"Sasori says that your knowledge of medicine would be valuable for the village. He also says that his knowledge would be valuable for you, too. If you stay." Kankuro possibly had not known what Sasori was thinking because he didn't seem happy to relay this information.

Even repulsed by the idea of spending more time here in this hut than strictly necessary, she was curious. "What kind of knowledge does he mean?"

Kankuro, clearly and visibly uncomfortable now, didn't need to confer with Sasori for that one. "He makes poisons and their antidotes. Medicine sometimes, but not always." He shifted his weight from foot to foot, while Sasori stayed unnaturally still and continued to watch Sakura. "He doesn't mean teaching you any of the druidic secrets, but he wants to know more of your modern Roman medicine and in return he will offer you similar knowledge."

"Tell him I'll think about it. I need to speak to Naruto before I do anything." Get me out of here! She didn't need to talk to Naruto; she needed out of this hut immediately and permanently.

Sasori and Kankuro conferred a bit longer and as she left the druid took her hand and ran impossibly cold and smooth fingers over her knuckles before waving them out with another smile, showing the hint of a dimple in one cheek. For being so beautiful and kind she couldn't shake the feeling like there was something wrong with him. Sakura didn't feel like she could breathe again until the hut was out of sight.

None of them spoke about the visit: Kankuro didn't approve, Temari couldn't articulate anything Sakura could understand, and Sakura was lost in thought. It would be an in, a place among the villagers sanctioned by the old gods. It implied that she had an expertise no one else possessed, and they would let her use it. No one in Rome would see a lady doctor, not officially, but out here among barbarians who would know or judge? In Rome she would be a bride, run a household, have children, and live the same life she saw her mother lead. That life had been easy, monotonous, but not without good points, assuming she married a nice man. Practically without family of any kind there was no guarantee she would marry at all, and living alone would be unbearable and very likely impossible. She'd have people who counted on her here if she stayed. But to leave Rome, and her friends, forever…

"How old is the druid?" Sakura needed to shake off all the heaviness today, somehow.

"Old enough to be our father." Kankuro said finally, then uncertainly. "We think."


	7. Chapter 7

"In his tent, Sakura!? What were you thinking!" Naruto, for all his affection for her and somewhat progressive ideas about women, still knew what her decisions might cost her in the eyes of other people.

"Nothing happened. I'm still intact." Naruto blushed immediately at her words but he was in the middle of a concerned rant, since he obviously thought that having a lack of near male blood relations had somehow left her care to him in an oblique way. She appreciated the sentiment, but she was too old to be lectured as if he knew better.

He sat, head in one hand, chunk of dried fish in the other, and scowled at her while they watched the training grounds swept of debris. "People don't care what happened, Sakura, they just need to think that something happened or else you'll never, uh—"

"I'll never what? Never find a man who would marry a 'used' woman? No one will know unless you tell them, and I know you'd go to your grave before you broke a promise." She picked at some of the new grass that was creating a fresh spring smell around them. "You make me wish I had done something just so I deserve listening to you whine about it."

She poked at his shoulder with one finger, "And what happened to all that 'Gaara is a great guy' talk?"

"That's before I knew you slept in his tent with him."

"Near him."

"Sakura," Naruto wasn't used to being the responsible one in a conversation and he didn't wear it well. "Gaara is my friend, a superior officer, and a great fighter. He's wealthy, he's powerful, and unless something changed since this morning he _can't stand the sight of you_. He would never spread rumors himself, but I don't know if he can stop all his men from saying something to someone else. I can't protect you from hundreds of big mouthed assholes."

It would just be a matter of time, she knew, between when she returned home and when the tale of her life here returned as well. It might be a year, or less even, but things had a way of catching up to people. Cavalry worked with various infantry units and even if they only told one or two men every unit… well Sakura had watched colds pass among her friends less quickly than juicy gossip.

"Is it that bad?" She leaned back, looking up the trunk of the tree. There was warmth in the afternoon air, wrapping her skin like a reassuring hug.

Naruto, unable to lie but optimistic enough to be unsure of the truth, leaned into her and chewed his fish. His cheesy grin made her smile in answer. Ino would have asked her how she felt, she thought. Then she would have refused to say anything and Ino would have been so tormented by not knowing she would have drawn the whole torrid tale from her and Sakura would have come to some amazing realization. By the end it would be like one of those romantic tales where the heroine tragically puts aside her feelings and the hero goes off to war… but there was always some sort of divine intervention after that. Minerva would give him great wisdom, or Venus would inspire him to return right as the heroine was about to expire from her own misery.

"Augh, but they always both die anyway!" She said the last part aloud, totally confusing Naruto. She wasn't even entirely sure of her feelings, other than anger at being practically run out of the village and an abiding curiosity about the feeling Gaara had sparked in her with that second kiss. Just the thought of it set her heart racing.

"You look sweaty, too hot in those black robes?"

"You look sweaty, too hot in that thick skull?"

Naruto snorted a laugh and slid down into a napping position, leaving Sakura to continue to stew in her own thoughts.

***

"How long are you staying?" Gaara had invited Naruto to eat the evening meal with him, and it had all been cheerful talk of dismemberment, bravery, and imperial politics until Naruto had started in on thinking about Hinata. Conversation had gotten a little soppy on his end, something Gaara didn't deal well with at the best of times.

"What's happened? This isn't like you." Naruto had never felt unwelcome around Gaara, but he was getting the distinct feeling that his friend wanted him gone. In a rare moment of personal insight he put two and two together. "You want Sakura to stay don't you? She's a little stubborn and a little violent, but she isn't totally unreasonable."

Gaara looked like he was going to crush his cup in his hand, and he stared daggers at Naruto. "Take her back to Rome and leave her there."

"She said nothing happened, but the way you're both acting that doesn't seem exactly, you know, TRUE." Naruto leaned in, serious. "Sakura is like a sister to me, and I mean to look out for her. If you did something to her, superior officer or no, I will beat the shit out of you."

"I didn't harm her."

Naruto was unrelenting. "I didn't say you harmed her, but something happened because you both are obviously telling me half the story, or less. I expect that from you, but not from her."

"So why don't you ask her?"

Laughing at that, Naruto still could not shake the tension from his shoulders. "Have you ever tried getting something out of Sakura she didn't want to say? Maybe if I forced a pitcher of wine down her throat, or three, and even then I'm not sure."

They both paused as they each imagined Sakura drunk. Naruto was sure he almost saw a smile on his friend's face before the usual dour expression returned.

Gaara, who couldn't ultimately deny his best and possibly only friend, conceded a little. "She distracts me from my purpose."

"That doesn't sound all bad."

"I'm miserable all the time."

Naruto was starting to get an inkling of what was up. "That sounds familiar…"

"I want to tear off her clothes and devour her."

Naruto made a face like he had just bit into a lemon. "I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that."

"It's better if she leaves me to get back to my life."

Looking around at the utilitarian surroundings, Naruto shrugged and picked up his drink again. "You're lucky that your life is so perfect that you don't need someone as great as Sakura in it. It's your decision, I guess." He thought about it for a minute. "I don't think I'd lie down and die if I didn't have Hinata to go home to after all this is done and I'm a famous general and everything. But knowing she's there makes me feel stronger."

"This isn't the same situation at all, Uzumaki."

"Right." Naruto gave his biggest smile. "Just out of curiosity, say I take Sakura home and she gets married right away." Already a dangerous aura seemed to be emanating from Gaara. He'd have to drop this before his friend exploded. "Don't think, just tell me: what's your first reaction?"

"Find the man, cut off his head, eat his heart." It might have been hyperbole, but with Gaara there was always room for doubt.

"You're both hopeless then. I'm not getting in the middle of it all but I'll say that you're both acting like idiots."

***

Sakura had a lot to think about on the journey to Rome. It was beautiful and bright every day, tanning her fair skin everywhere she was exposed giving her the strangest tan lines and bleaching out her already faded pink hair even further. Naruto loved having her along for the journey and his easy way with people had Sakura welcomed everywhere they stopped even if their travelling situation was at best unconventional. What had taken months for a large caravan did not take nearly as long returning with good weather on horseback, but it felt just as long to her aching muscles. At rest points she read her medical text first from cover to cover, but eventually just the pieces she couldn't already recite from memory. Naruto was always willing to chat, if she felt like talking, but she stayed away from the other people travelling near and with the mail wagons. It felt like if she started to talk to people she would give away something, though she didn't have any information anyone would want, and they stayed away from the girl in black assuming her haste in returning home had to do with a death in the family. Ultimately, they would have been right as none of this would have happened if her father had still been alive.

People started to visit her when the inevitable happened and injuries occurred on the road. The only significant incident was a man who fell off his horse when a snake slid across the road and broke his arm badly. Luckily Sakura had seen her father handle those enough times that she didn't even need to think to begin to treat him, but her easy command of the situation and quick thinking resulted in more attention on the way in to Rome than she wanted or expected. Gifts of food, people coming by to chat (often starting out as a consultation of health and ending in random topics), and suddenly Sakura found she didn't have time to read let alone dwell on the village that had been her home in spring.

It was very nearly the ides of August when they were in sight of Rome and she knew that her friends would be preparing for the Nemoralia celebration, most not in town by the time she arrived. No triumphant return, but a quiet slink back into her empty home seemed fitting. The place inside of her where hope for the future was supposed to be seemed to be mostly filled with doubts and questions.

The empty store fronts greeting her upon arriving at her home in the city were bleak enough that Naruto actually paused and waited to see if she was ok to go in alone. Sakura waved him away as he was leading her horse to be stabled with his, and he kept looking back until he had to turn a corner as if she were going to bolt or fall apart. All she did was look from the left where he father's medical practice had been to the right where her mother's servant had sold extra garden herbs and her mother had run an informal centralized gossip location for the ladies of the neighborhood. Memories of rich green odors and the strange medicinal wafts from next door actually brought tears to her eyes, and she stifled them by sweeping her way past into the atrium of the house proper.

Her room was immediately to the right, but Sakura didn't go there first. Her father's office was directly ahead and that was the only place she wanted to be. It was small, smelled of medicine and parchment, and there were good memories here of learning all sorts of useful things playing with medical tools he had discarded and hearing her mother's voice in the background. She missed those days when he was at war, and it was easy to pretend he was on a trip rather than cremated on foreign soil. She'd have to purchase a cenotaph and have it placed next to her mother's tomb.

Feeling more alone than she ever had been in living memory she let exhaustion overtake her. Among the dust and cobwebs, she fell asleep in her father's study and dreamed of spinning wool in a dark place.

***

"It's your party and you look miserable." Ino plopped down beside Sakura who had hidden away under a low tree in the grove where all her friends were picnicking in honor of her being alive and among them again. The cenotaph had been erected and the appropriate funerary rites had been performed a week ago. With some of the money she had inherited, Sakura had purchased new clothes and had taken the time to dye her hair again though she allowed it to be lighter red than usual hoping secretly it would fade to the petal pink shade she had grown used to after a time.

"I do not look—" Seeing the arch look Ino was giving her she didn't even pretend to argue. "Ok, I'm miserable."

"You don't look like you're about to cry so you probably aren't thinking of your family," Ino didn't pull punches around Sakura, which was a reason she both liked and disliked her longtime friend. "So this must be the only other reason you look sad these days, and I know you won't talk about him anymore to me so you can stop that scathing comment about to escape your lips."

Anger was replacing sadness, and that was probably exactly as Ino had calculated. "I wasn't going to say anything."

"Please, Sakura, I've known you too long." Raucous laughter focused both of their attentions over to where Naruto and Lee were arm wrestling. Naruto was losing again and again, but he refused to admit defeat. Hinata was very nearly glued to his side, twisting her iron engagement band around one finger. It would be a few more years until Naruto had completed his military service and that promise was realized but she didn't seem to care.

"They look happy."

"_You_ can be happy, but you aren't letting yourself!" Ino, whose engagement to Chouji would be out of negotiation and into reality within days had decided that now that her own future was secure was charged with making sure all her friends were taken care of similarly. "It's a beautiful day, all your friends are here, and you're sitting in a dark place looking like you want to drown yourself during dessert. You could at least go sit by Shikamaru and pretend like you're talking while he sleeps if you want to be such a downer."

That actually made her giggle a little when she looked over to see that their notoriously lazy friend was getting a sunburn on his legs due to the light's movement since he began sleeping.

"You're right I've got to snap out of it. It's just, I don't know, hard to explain why it's hard to explain."

"Well, if you don't get it together the only man who will want you is Lee." They both shuddered.

Sakura waved her away. "Ok ok, I'll come over and smile and talk but only so long as you stop harassing me over the whole marriage thing."

"I just don't get what you're waiting for; it's not as if you're getting any younger."

"Love you too, Ino."

***

It was the time of the October Horse but Sakura didn't have the stomach to see either sacrifices or chariot races and was instead looking over the household accounts. Until the special taxes went into effect on her twentieth birthday next March (as penalty for being single) then she would easily have enough to support her small household. If she could put together some sort of quiet medical practice then perhaps she could bring in some income and the tax wouldn't matter. Usually people had whole families to help them with these sorts of decisions. The nearest Haruno relatives were all far away, farming their land, and wanted no piece of the city life. The idea of moving to live with distant cousins out of necessity made her sigh deeply. Lee's formal marriage proposal was still sitting on her father's desk, sealed, and would remain that way. So many choices and none of them good.

Not that she had rosy memories of her time in Gaara's village, but she didn't feel like forces greater than one person were out to get her. This empty house, all her friends who were marrying and starting families, they all felt suddenly foreign. Before she had forced his hand, she'd been basically happy. When she imagined marriage, a family, it wasn't that far off from what she had had there.

The soldiers had returned for winter and Sakura was reasonably sure that with their return even Lee's proposal would be retracted. Lee himself wouldn't care, and if Sakura claimed purity then her word would be enough for him, but his parents wouldn't see things the same way. Lee really was a good man, and it was too bad he was probably going to be teased for offering for her once the rumors began.

When the loud knock came, Sakura assumed it was Naruto trying (vainly) to get her to come see the races. She loved chariot races as a kid, and they used to pretend they were charioteers when they were very little. Naruto had been the horse.

"I told you, there's no way that I'm going to fight my way through all your smelly military friends so I can sit and watch horses go around in circles today!"

The man at the entrance, decorative helmet in hand, was not Naruto. It wasn't Lee, or the mailman, or even the cook she had hired to deliver meals every few days. Gaara stood there looking uncomfortable but somehow completely self-possessed like whatever was inconveniencing him was someone else's fault. The streets were empty so Sakura briefly thought there was a possibility that he was a ghost.

"Gaara." Shivers ran down her spine as she examined him in full ceremonial uniform. Shining metals, oiled leather, and fine cloth couldn't hide those sleeplessly bruised eyes or his tight lipped expression like the world wasn't passing an inspection. She thought he looked unexpectedly handsome in his uniform, and hated herself for thinking it because it created a pit of longing in her stomach.

He didn't say anything, so she invited him in and they walked together through the atrium to the garden where Sakura had chairs set up since harvest season began. It was unconventional to sit near the household garden, but she didn't want to be in a more enclosed space with him, knowing she was already here in the house alone.

"Can I offer you anything to eat or drink?" He shook his head, and Sakura only just realized he was not attempting to meet her eyes.

"Naruto says you live here alone."

No social graces at all; she had almost missed that. "Yes. The rest of my family owns land far from here. My father was the second son of his father as well as the second surgeon. He wanted to strike out on his own. The military was always generous to him. But he was also very good at what he did."

"I had thought you had family here."

"I have friends, that's almost the same to me."

They sat in awkward silence for a bit. He didn't seem angry, exactly, but he seemed nervous and impatient. "Temari doesn't say she misses you, but she has been much harder on my troops when we practice. She has injured a few of them quite badly."

"I'm sorry?" Sakura didn't know if he was saying that to make her feel good or bad about the situation.

"Have you had… ?" Whatever this was, it was totally out of his comfort zone and his accent was thick as he formed the Latin. "With your suitors. Have men been bothering you?"

"I don't have any 'suitors.' And if I did they would be none of your business." This was so weird and awkward; she wanted to go hide somewhere he couldn't follow.

Gaara cleared his throat. "Naruto told me you were unwell. I see that's not the case, so I'll leave."

"No…" She had felt like things had fallen in place with her life somehow when she had opened the door to see him standing there. Staying aloof didn't seem important when real alarm spread through at the thought of him leaving. "I want you to stay with me."

Already to the edge of the garden, Gaara halted and turned with military precision. The vague expression he had entered with now had changed to something determined. He had entered into this with no plan, originally, she thought, and now he could see his objective.

"Stay and visit, I mean." Sakura finished weakly.

"Is that what you want?" It was a loaded question and she saw implications spreading out from it the way water leaks from a crack in a dam.

She had had nearly half a year to think about what she wanted. "Yes."

He walked over to her, and lifted her hand to slide an iron ring onto it. He had to try a few fingers before he found one that it fit. She stood there, shocked. "If you don't like it, you don't need to wear it."

"I think you skipped a few things here," Sakura began, finding her voice at last. "Written offers? Talking things over with me? Maybe even, I don't know, saying something nice to me?!" Her voice had been rising in pitch and tone as she tried to pull back from hysteria.

"Were you going to say no?"

"I don't know! No?! I wanted to be asked!"

"Your friend Ino seemed to think asking you would not be as successful."

"That traitor!" She felt like a conspiracy was unfolding before her. Naruto, Ino, who knows who else had been involved or what they had told him "I'm going to sneak into her house and, and, burn her hair!" She took a deep breath, realizing he hadn't let go of her hand yet. "What else did they tell you?" Unnatural calm had overtaken her, but Gaara wasn't cowed by her dangerous mood swing.

"They wrote to me," Gaara said, "And your Ino was very insistent that you were going to die of grief at my rejection. I've many people, but this one would be new for me." It seemed like he was making a joke but there was no indication that it might be one from his body language.

Fires lit behind her eyes, as she imagined the terrible things she was going to do to her friend for spreading vicious lies. Die of grief indeed!

"At first I thought it was some sort of trick, but then Naruto wrote me and said you were turning away all reasonable marriage offers so I needed to do the honorable thing and at least give you the option. He seems to think we were dishonest about our involvement." Gaara actually smiled for a moment, letting it fade away to a shadow. "Your friend Ino suggested I just abduct you."

"You already tried that once."

"As I explained to her."

Reluctantly letting go of her hand, Gaara sat again. "I'll take that drink now." Whatever had fueled his journey here to her seemed to have exhausted him.

"Hospitality or no, I have some questions first. Sappy letters wouldn't bring you here. Tell me why you're here, and this had better be both accurate and satisfying or I am going to throw this ring over the garden wall and send you on your way."

His fingers formed a steeple and he closed his eyes briefly, as she had seen him do when he was thinking particularly hard over maps of enemy terrain. This looked like it would take a while so Sakura gave it a minute and went to fetch a cup of fresh pear juice. She almost thought he had fallen asleep when she return, but he opened his eyes and regarded her oddly coolly before taking the cup.

"My life is empty." These words were not practiced or put in his mouth by other people, and she tried to force herself to be patient as his low voice carried truth to her at last. "I am a weapon for the empire. I will never have, and probably don't deserve, peace. But you let me taste it, when you're with me."

And he would give her purpose, a place to be herself, someone to love. She never could have said no, even if she despised how her emotions and needs had cornered her neatly. He didn't need an answer from her, possibly didn't care what it was so long as she came with him, but of her own volition she found herself bending down to plant a soft kiss on his lips. He tasted of pears.

It almost broke her heart how relieved he looked when she pulled back, like he had just taken a huge risk.

"I suppose I should actually learn your language now, properly." Sakura tried to sound like it didn't intimidate her. Gaara said something to her she couldn't understand, and she wondered how long before he couldn't pull that trick on her ever again.

"I said your hair looks different." He examined her up and down, his expression changing subtly as his gaze lingered certain areas. "And that I liked it better when you wore black."

Sakura pushed aside a prickle of annoyance as she allowed herself to feel happy about whatever this was. (Her engagement?) Normally there would be a party, and instead they were in an empty house while the rest of Rome celebrated crops, death, and the violence of the race.

Turning around, she began to walk into the house. "There's food in the kitchen, let me go and—" A whoosh of air left her lungs as he pulled her against his chest. There was a clatter as she heard the cup drop to the ground. Somehow he had stood up and moved over to her so silently she hadn't sensed him until he was practically on top of her.

"That can wait." There was a something feral in the way he dug his hands into her shoulders, holding her in place with more force than he probably knew he was exerting. He wasn't hurting her, but it almost seemed like he wanted to, just a little.

"Gaara," She said, feeling her body temperature rise as he stirred feelings in her she last remembered experiencing when he kissed her that day in the tent, months ago. "We waited this long, we can wait a little longer."

He had more self-control than people gave him credit for, she thought, as he took a shaky breath and let her go. "Is that what you want?"

So many choices had been made for her until recently. Where she was going to live, who she could spend time with, how her days played out, but since she had met Gaara she realized that the moment he had taken her captive she had been given more choices about her life than she had ever expected she'd have. This was how she knew she loved him: that he knew to offer her a choice even when he knew he wouldn't like the answer. Well, she wasn't feeling as predictable as all that today. And she had had months to think of this meeting, just as he had.

"No, it isn't."

She managed to surprise him. Everyone thought she was despoiled, so she decided to prove them all right, but on her terms.

The clatter of armor hitting stone filled the hallways, a trail of leather and cloth neatly ending in front of Sakura's room. From now on, as it had been from the start, if he was going to be considered a monster he would be her monster.


End file.
